"We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short-term signals — hearts, likes, thumbs up — and we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth," he said. "And instead what it really is is fake, brittle popularity that's short-term and that leaves you even more — admit it — vacant and empty before you did it, because then it forces you into this vicious cycle where you're like, 'What's the next thing I need to do now because I need it back?'

But now it's even parodying itself---in the way only the online spectacle can: by folding back into itself to keep us watching.

The problems and concerns, long since established, are all now just a big joke. Short attention spans. Superficial engagement with information. Advertising masquerading as content. The convergence of extremely powerful corporate empires that influence what we think, feel, and do, in a way never before possible. Distraction from the real world, while the real world burns.

The story of this first short is about the end of the world, and nobody even cares. Could that be any more close to home?

There's also a short about an "Uber for people," invoking the themes of exploitation, surveillance, and the enslavement-addiction to technological solutions that parodies the screen culture of today---especially the mindset of "apps fix all."

Can we see this as one thing in terms of another?

Likewise with, "Enter the Hive Mind."

What will you do, when it's time you're asked to put your whole self into the global computer even more completely than now? What is your personal threshold? Will you continue to "breathe life" into the machine?

This short video explores how the online world has overwhelmingly become the popular outlet for public rage by briefly illustrating some of the many stories of everyday people which have suddenly become public enemy number one under the most misunderstood of circumstances and trivial narratives. With the web acting like a giant echo-chamber, amplifying false stories and feeding on the pent-up aggression of the audience watching the spectacle, The Outrage Machine shows how these systems froth the mob mentality into a hideous mess, as a good example of where the spectacle goes and how its intensity has to keep ratcheting up in order maintain the audience attention, in a culture of dwindling attention spans, distraction and triviality.

Filmmaker and author Jon Ronson also recently wrote a book about this topic too, which is quite good. So You've Been Publicly Shamed. His TED talk is essentially a 17 min overview:

And a longer presentation with interview and Q&A from earlier this year:

"Internet addiction after launching smartphone is becoming serious. Therefore this paper has attempted to sketch out the diverse addiction treatment and then check the feasibility of exercise rehabilitation. The reason to addict the internet or smartphone is personalized individual characters related personal psychological and emotional factors and social environmental factors around them. We have shown that 2 discernible approaches due to 2 different addiction causes: that is behavioral treatment and complementary treatment. In the behavioral treatment, cognitive behavioral approach (CBT) is representative methods for changing additive thoughts and behaviors. Motivational interviewing (MI) is also the brief approach for persons not ready to change their behavior. Mindfulness behavioral cognitive treatment (MBCT) also the adapted treatment based on CBT. There are different types following the emphatic point, mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) or mindfulness oriented recovery enhancement (MORE). It is apparent that therapeutic recreation, music therapy using drumming activity, and art therapy are useful complementary treatment. Exercise rehabilitation contained the systematic procedures and comprehensive activities compared to previous addiction treatments by contents and techniques. Exercise rehabilitation can treat both physical symptoms at first and mental problems in the next step. So more evidence-based exercise rehabilitation researches need to do, but it is highly probable that exercise rehab can apply for smartphone addiction.

Now worth comparing the claims made by Michael and Michael in their research about a new 'breed' of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD) that will need to be defined with respect to new emerging technologies acting as triggers toward these behaviours. See for instance this media article in the Illawarra Mercury summarising the concerns.

"A Canadian law firm will use data from a Fitbit fitness tracker for the first time in court as an objective measure of activity.

The data will be provided by the plaintiff in a personal injury lawsuit in an effort to show life-affecting reduced activity post injury. But the case has implications for fitness trackers and smartwatches, including Motorola’s Moto 360 and Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch that can track movement.

The information for the case will be willingly provided by the plaintiff and processed by data company Vivametrica, which collects data from wearables and compares it with the activity and health of the general population. The plaintiff’s lawyers will use the data in an attempt to prove the accident’s detrimental affects.

“Till now we’ve always had to rely on clinical interpretation,” Simon Muller of McLeod Law firm in Calgary told Forbes. “Now we’re looking at longer periods of time though the course of a day, and we have hard data."

‘Only a matter of time before data from wearables is commonplace in litigation’

Beyond simple activity, fitness trackers are capable of measuring sleep and other biological data. In 2015 they are set to become more sophisticated with devices capable of measuring heart rate and detailed information about sleep patterns going on sale. Smart clothing with advanced sensors is also expected to take off by 2016, according to data from Gartner, providing another avenue for data collection.

“Wearables have the ability, among other things, to track an individual’s heart rate, workout regimens, as well as take photos and videos, and run searches on the web,” said Shakoori. “Additionally, most wearables mine geolocation data, such as running routes or the location where a photo was taken.”

The privacy of data from wearable devices has already been identified by regulators as an issue, including the US Federal Trade Commission. However, where data is stored about an individual, traditionally in the cloud as well as locally in dedicated smartphone apps, poses questions around access by law enforcement or courts and how rigorously companies defend individual’s data privacy rights."

"A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."

"An American family has claimed their son committed suicide because of a viral video taken of him in a school bathroom. According to ABC 10 News in San Diego Matthew's friends told his parents a classmate had peered over a bathroom stall and recorded Matthew while he was at school. The friends said the classmate posted the video, allegedly of Matthew masturbating, on social networking sites Snapchat and Vine."

Social media networks purport the ability to interact with culture—talking directly to artists, celebrities, movies, brands, and even one another—in ways never before possible. But is this real empowerment? Or do marketing companies still hold the upper hand? Generation Like explores how the perennial quest for identity and connection is usurped in the pervasive game of cat-and-mouse by vast corporate power in the extensive machine for consumerism that is now the online environment. The audience becomes the marketer; buzz is subtly controlled and manipulated by and from real-time behavioural insights; and the content generated is sold back to the audience in the name of participation. But does the audience even think they’re being used? Do they care? Or does the perceived chance to be the ‘next big star’ make it all worth it?

The United States of Secrets chronologically accounts the Bush administration’s embrace of illegal and widespread dragnet surveillance and eavesdropping programmes, along with President Obama’s decision to continue them and expand them (despite campaign promises to the contrary) by weaving narratives by those who sought to blow the whistle on these programmes over the decades—culminating with Edward Snowden’s unprecedented dump of insider documents in 2013. We see how and why those inside the NSA and other government agencies came to act; what actions were effective, and what role the mainstream media had and continues to have in keeping such secret projects alive and untouchable in the name of ‘national security.’

Part one details the emergence of a top secret project within the NSA called ‘The Program’ which was a series of mass-surveillance, capture, storage, and data analysis operations that expanded after the events of September 11, 2001. The Program drew on preceding decades of ‘national security’ measures charting back to the Regan administration and beyond, which were embraced by the regime of George W Bush, and expanded with the Obama administration. This first episode ties together the machinations of a dark world of secret surveillance, spoken by those who blew the whistle from the inside, and why.

Part two details how companies like Google and Facebook provide excellent data harvesting portals for intelligence agencies such as the NSA, by operating huge infrastructures for targeted advertising—which is is one and the same with surveillance.